To promote its Fall 1978 line-up ABC commissioned a series of seven posters–one for each night of the week–depicting characters from its new and returning shows. Check back every day this week for a look at one of these posters. Today we’ll examine the Sunday poster.

Sundays on ABC in the fall of 1978 featured two hour-long shows and a two-hour movie block:

The three-hour series premiere of Battlestar Galactica aired from 8-11PM on September 17th as a special installment of The ABC Sunday Night Movie before moving into its regular 8-9PM time slot on September 24th. The Hardy Boys Mysteries (formerly The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries) kicked off its third and final season at 7PM on October 1st with the first half of a special two-part episode. The ABC Sunday Night Movie officially started its new season at 9PM that same night with a made-for-TV movie called The Users starring Jaclyn Smith.

Here’s the ABC poster for its Sunday lineup:

ABC Fall 1978 Posters: Sunday

The bulk of the poster consists of characters from The Hardy Boy Mysteries and Battlestar Galactica. You’ve got Cylons, Dirk Benedict in a cape, and in lower right-hand corner Boxey and his robotic daggit Muffit (for those not well-versed in Battlestar Galactica, a daggit is basically a dog).

Let’s look a little closer:

That’s Britt Ekland as Tenna and Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, as seen in the two-part episode “The Gun on Ice Planet Zero” (aired on October 22nd and October 29th). I find it odd that Ekland was on the poster considering she was a guest-star, even if she was a former Bond girl. I’m not sure she’s recognizable enough in her cold weather outfit to justify including her rather than one of the other series regulars.

And another close-up:

It’s a decent likeness of Lorne Greene, don’t you think? Interestingly, the three people posed below him with guns don’t look like any characters from Battlestar Galactica. They look somewhat like a similar trio that appear in artwork by Frank Frazetta that was later used as the cover for the novelization of “The Gun on Ice Planet Zero.”

Do you know who painted this poster? Can you identify the artist’s name?

Comparing the signatures, there’s some difference but that’s likely due to a passage of time. The later signatures seem to be more carefully written. The one for the poster looks rushed. The poster signature merges the “c” of “Mc” and the “V” together to make it look like a “W.” But there are at least five points of comparison that are the same. The “C” appears similar. The “M” starts with a high bar at the left. The “V” looks like a checkmark with the pen lifting from the paper as it finishes. The “k” is written with two different pen strokes. And the dot on the “i” is to the right of the “i.” So it definitely appears to be his signature. I’m no expert though.

The original (1978) “Battlestar Galactica” was one of the most-hyped show in TV history.

In the week or two prior to it’s premiere, it seemed that ABC-TV ran promotional spots for it three or four times an hour as well as extensive newspaper ads.

The premiere attracted huge ratings, but the ratings fell-off as the season went on.

The show’s short-lived second season (1980) had the Galactica crew finally reach Earth, which turned out to be the then present-day Earth.

One tidbit: The premiere episode was interrupted (on the East Coast) for about twenty minutes for special news coverage of the signing of the Camp David peace treaty. But once that news special ended, ABC picked-up “Galactica” from where it had been interrupted, so viewers didn’t miss anything.

But what was supposed to be a three-hour pilot/premiere running from 8 to 11 P.M. Eastern ended up running from 8 to 11:20 P.M. Eastern (including the twenty-miniute news interruption).

I was 11 when Battlestar Galactica premiered and it was the shiznit. I drew the Cylons and spaceships all day long in my school notebooks and debated my friends on whether Apollo or Starbuck was tougher. The Cylons’ “By your command” was a great catch phrase.

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